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The Institute of Cultural Affairs (ICA) has for decades employed facilitation as a core strategy in our mission of ‘advancing human development worldwide’. When I myself first trained with ICA in the UK, as an international volunteer to a Human Development Project of ICA in India in 1986, a core element of that training was in what was then referred to as ‘ICA methods’ – what is now known worldwide as ICA’s ‘Technology of Participation’ (ToP) facilitation methodology. Facilitation remains central to our approach to doing human development, and to being ICA.

This facilitative approach is more critical today than ever in enabling the human family to address the great challenges and opportunities that are now facing us and our planet. We argue, in an ICAI statement submitted this month to the UN Committee of Experts on Public Administration (CEPA), that facilitation has a key role to play in moving from commitments to results, transforming public institutions and leadership for the implementation and monitoring of the Sustainable Development Goals.

In this issue you will find a diverse collection of stories illustrating how ICAs and colleagues of our global network are applying such a facilitative approach in a variety of settings, from local to global, often in peer-to-peer collaboration with each each other.

A rehabilitation project of ICA Nepal brings hope to those affected by that country’s earthquake, supported by ICA Australia. ICA Taiwan builds a learning community through ‘Truth About Life’ dialogues. ICA Chile partners with the Ministry of Social development and with Global Facilitators Serving Communities (GFSC) in leadership development work with disabled people. ICA Peru supports comprehensive community development programmes in high altitude mountain communities affected by climate change. Emerging Ecology USA and ICA India develop a capacity building curriculum, building on ICA’s original Human Development Training Institutes of the 1970s.

Ann Epps of LENS International Malaysia reflects on the Certified Professional Facilitator (CPF) programme of the International Association of Facilitators (IAF), founded in 1994 by 70 ICA ToP facilitators including Ann herself. Winds & Waves editor Rosemary Cairns reflects on the role played by facilitation in turning volunteers into a social movement, through a Community Revitalization through Democratic Action programme in Serbia following the NATO bombing of 1999. I myself share a reflection on how facilitation, and ICA’s ToP Participatory Strategic Planning process in particular, helped Oxfam in Lebanon last year embark on a complex and challenging change process in the midst of a complex and challenging response to the unfolding Syria crisis (see also Facilitating change in complexity).

Meanwhile, ICAI members continue to step up their peer-to-peer support and collaboration through means of online and regional ICA gatherings, and ICAI global working groups as well. ICAs in East & Southern Africa met in Zimbabwe in March, ICAs of the Americas are now preparing to meet in Peru in May and ICAs of West Africa, Europe MENA and Asia Pacific are making plans for their own regional gatherings later in the year.

In order to enhance the reach and impact of our ToP facilitation approach worldwide, the ICAI global ToP working group is busy developing proposals to support implementation of the global ToP policy agreed last year, drawing on insights gleaned responses to a recent global ToP survey. The ICAI Board is pleased to have agreed a Memorandum of Understanding with the International Association of Facilitators (IAF) to promote and support greater collaboration between our two organizations, our respective members and our local groups around the world.

Thank you to all who have contributed to this new issue of Winds & Waves. Enjoy this issue, and please share it and encourage others to do so.

Welcome to this latest issue of Winds & Waves, the online magazine of ICA International.

Mentoring and coaching, as well as facilitation, training and demonstration projects, are among the many ways that ICA works worldwide to change images, or worldviews, and thus to bring about positive personal, organisational and societal change. I have been both a mentor and a mentee this year, supporting a Ukrainian colleague to prepare for her Certified ToP Facilitator assessment as I have prepared for my own.

Larry Philbrook of ICA Taiwan refers to the ‘image theory’ that underlines this approach (page 9) and how he has applied it to coaching and mentoring. Jen Schanen and Beverly Scow’s story from the USA (page 13) illustrates the approach in action. This issue also includes stories of personal coaching and mentoring from Aruba, Canada, Chile, Nepal, Taiwan, Ukraine, UK & Africa and the USA, among others. Common themes include partnership and intentionality, as well as the application of ICA’s Technology of Participation (ToP) methodology and in particular the ToP Focused Conversation method and ‘ORID’ framework (page 11).

ICA International’s ‘peer-to-peer’ approach to mutual support and collaboration among its member ICAs reflects the same values and principles of partnership and intentionality, applied to shared learning and development within and among organisations. How this approach unfolds at a global level is illustrated by stories in this issue from Svetlana Salamatova of ICA Ukraine (page 17) and from Steve Harrington in Costa Rica (page 19).

It is a key role of ICA International to facilitate and support such intentional partnership working, learning and development among members. As we approach the ICAI General Assembly on December 12, we are approaching the culmination of the work of two ICAI global working groups that have been tasked this year with helping to further develop the conditions for such collaboration to flourish – the global ToP Policy working group and the Global Conferencing working group. We are also approaching the election of four new members to the ICAI Board, and the retirement of four – Krishna Shrestha of ICA Australia, Isabel de la Maza of ICA Chile, Shankar Jadhav of ICA India and Gerald Gomani of ICA Zimbabwe. I am grateful to all of them, and to all those who have volunteered their time and energy to support our global mission this year – including as members of the Board, of our global working groups, and of course of the tireless editorial team of this Winds and Waves magazine and our monthly bulletin the Global Buzz.

Please ask for details to join the General Assembly on December 12 if you have not received them directly, and watch this space for the outcome in the next issue. In the meantime, season’s greetings and a Happy New Year to all our readers, and enjoy this issue!